Simply Maximus

After a two-and-a-half hour wait we are beginning to lose hope - but not quite. The memory of Maximus's leather skirt in Gladiator keeps us in our seats.

We are waiting like attentive slave girls to get a glimpse of 36-year-old Russell Crowe, who is in Britain to promote his latest film, Proof of Life.

Director Taylor Hackford appears and mumbles on about America's view of the world and how he wanted to use the movie to 'reveal' the Andes.

We don't want to listen to him - he is about as popular as one of those lone singers who used to go on before the Beatles.

It is the great Crowe we have come to see, the world's new heartthrob and the living antidote to Leonardo DiCaprio.

He appeals to the kind of woman who secretly likes a man with a bull neck and a razor scar.

Certain older actors also like him. Richard Harris and Anthony Hopkins both say he reminds them of their youth. Most men, of course, don't.

The lugubrious Angus Deayton made the mistake of including a film clip of a younger Crowe riding a horse in the nude on a recent television show.

Deayton was scathing, gloating over how Crowe would surely feel terribly embarrassed by this archive discovery.

In fact it was one of the most erotic film clips ever shown on prime-time television. As Crowe's muscles gripped the saddle, I could have watched a great deal more.

At last, the famous body built on a diet of Bourbon and cheeseburgers appears. At least, I think it's him.

He is so covered in hair, with beard and long floppy locks, that it's hard to tell. Tieless, with an open-necked shirt and dark jacket, he looks very inconspicuous.

His bodyguard, standing against the wall, actually looks more like the Russell Crowe we've seen on screen - the burly Maximus in Gladiator and the righteous Bud White in LA Confidential.

I notice that he has enormous fingers, like bonsai tree trunks. They go with his reputation for acting with all the grace of a tree trunk.

He does not seem particularly happy to be here. In fact, he looks as if he is on the verge of hitting someone. His voice is a one-note growl and some rather rude words are coming out.

Obviously he'd rather have been in bed - the place in which he spends an increasing amount of time and which has been quite good for his remarkable career.

He once said he only goes to LA to 'look at the freaks'. But he certainly enjoys the company of the lady freaks very much.

In the three years he has been famous he has been closely associated with Nicole Kidman, Winona Ryder, Jodie Foster, Courteney Cox and model Erica Baxter.

He has just finished a torrid affair with Meg Ryan, his co-star in Proof of Life, who left her husband of nine years, Dennis Quaid, to be with him.

Crowe has assured the Press that he'd prefer to be on his farm, Nana Glen, near Sydney, hobnob-bing with cows rather than hanging around LA.

Unfortunately the outback doesn't have the likes of Ryan or Ryder, so he has to fly to the U.S. now and then, and make a few films.

'Are you a marriage wrecker?' piped up one hopeful woman journalist from the back of the room.

The ending of Meg's marriage has nothing to do with me,' he replies in his slow growl. 'She's a brave and beautiful woman with a brilliant mind and I grieve for her companionship. But we are still friends.'

This is very exciting - a man who looks like a bear, but is articulate. He is obviously a backwoodsman poet. 'I couldn't live in LA,' he tells us. 'It would be like unrolling my swag bag in the office.

'But I remain open - bigger things, stronger forces could lead me back there.'

'Could that force be sex?' I ask. He looks appalled. 'I was thinking of love,' he says reproachfully, as if I have seriously shocked him. 'That was a terrible thing to say,' he admonishes me.

Then it is all over. The ladies of the Press have upset him too much. He can't stay any longer.

'I read a lot,' he says. 'And I am reading up on the next role I play, of a tormented mathematician.'

Better and better. Now he, like Meg Ryan, is exhibiting signs of a 'brilliant mind'.

On his way out, I corner him. Is that 'bigger, stronger force,' dragging him back to LA, anything to do with Miss Ryan?

He turns his round, flat, rather red face towards me, with a look both enigmatic and full of hostility - mostly hostility.

'I was talking in theory,' he rasps. Forget about his pretensions to intellect. He is a man who can seriously put a woman in her place. That is why we like him so much.